


To Catch A Snake

by Tolpen



Series: Lord Of Crows [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Fantasy, Gen, Man vs. Nature, Nature is scary, Snake Hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 05:46:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13207257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tolpen/pseuds/Tolpen
Summary: Mercenaries do dangerous and unwanted work for money. Or to prove there isn't any idiocy people wouldn't do. Or because of a bet.In Mayjinn, a small kingdom located so south the winter means four months of rain, a mercenary called Raven has to find a certain snake, the odder. There are, of course, problems. There are always problems. It is night. And it rains. And Raven hates anything outside of urban areas.AKA: Introducing Raven.





	To Catch A Snake

**Author's Note:**

> Translating this was an experiment with present tense. Let me tell you, this was... a hell. But it isn't a complete disaster.

The winter rain turns everything into a horrible muddy slush. In the lazy sparse packs of mist, everything seems grey, dully brown or in those rare moments of colour, dark green. A careful observer can notice a black spot here and there in the forest.  
One specific black spot is struggling as it wades thorough the soggy undergrowth and mush of forest soil and leaves underneath it. Occasionally a shoe gets stuck in the mud and then the black spot has to pull really hard to get its leg free. As is the law of the mud, it happens so in the least expected moment, the momentum sending the spot into the mud whole. For this reason the spot is by now more brown and grey rather than black.  
Right in the moment the spot forces itself free from another muddy hug and falls backwards right into a puddle and a thorny bush of blackberries. It lays still for a moment and lets it rain on itself. It seems it is considering its situation. Eventually the spot says: “Fuck.”  
Two things can be concluded from that. First, the spot is trying its best not to be irritated and acknowledging its failing in that, it is raging mad. Second, the spot is a guy. Namely it is Ricin and he feels quite under the weather. It could be even said that he feels too sober considered the circumstances and his situation and whatnots.  
He remains still for just a little longer because his feet have been aching for quite a time now. He has always been more of a city fellow and preferred solid pavement, or since we are speaking of Ricin Raven here, roof. Therefore he's never gotten used to wading thorough woods five hours straight. He has always thought that forests should contain aside from trees also some solid ground, a few chipping little birds, mushrooms, maybe raspberries. For the time he has spent here, he hasn't seen any of that, save for the trees. He has found a few hoof fungi which do not count as mushrooms because you can't eat them.  
He gets to his feet with a very wet sticky squelch and continues walking. At one point he has to stop and shoo away a group of wildnymphs who think him their lost brother. Upon any other occasion he'd be gravely offended, but now all he could think about was pouring a whole teapot of mint down his throat, and he just wanted the girls to stop clinging to him and go shrill and yowl elsewhere.  
  
Ricin has found himself in a small cave, shivering with cold despite sitting next to a camp fire. Maybe he is cold because of the chilly weather and the still rain outside. Maybe it is because his clothes are hanging and drying over the flames like a roasting chicken. His knives are lying on the ground next to him, doing their best not to catch a rust.   
One of the wildnymphs with an unpronounceable name is making tea. Well... Tea... There were leaves and she has boiled them into a mash and Raven isn't brave enough to examine the matter any further. Another wildnymph is trying on his shoes and the third one, whose name he can even pronounce and it sounds like Squelche, is doing his hair. She is, in fact, undoing them, but that is what wildnymphs mean by doing hair. This messy bird nest on your head means an hour of work each day, you don't wake up like this, you know?  
Raven managed to convince the girls that he really isn't their lost brother. However, they thought it a good idea to drag him over for dinner as their guest. When somebody offers you a free warm meal, you don't argue with them. They could give it a second thought. Plus wildnymphs haven't got fish on their menu, and a person who has spent the last two years in a fisherman hamlet can really appreciate that.  
He lets them to have their fun for a time. Obviously the girls haven't guests much often and they have come to the conclusion they have to make up for it now. Raven has admired the collection of cones for them, he proposes every compliment about the set of animal skulls of all kinds he has thought of. Positive commentaries about the collage made of leaves, twigs and fur takes a real man, but he has proven himself one. Meanwhile his clothes managed to dry, therefore he faces the following musical performance clothed and armed. Which is only for good, because Raven was born with an ear for music, and in an attempt to maintain his own sanity he legs it, he runs for it, he goes long and goes far, further, further, far away from that apocalypse of sound.  
  
Raven decided to take advice from squirrels and solved the problem of the no-wading forest zone by climbing from tree to tree and branch to bough. For most people the wet slippery bark would be an insurmountable obstacle in their way, but Ricin has been always good at climbing. Very good. The only problem was that after an extended period of time it had him exhausted.  
For this very reason he is now comfortably nestled in a fork of an oak, well as comfortably as you can get on a rainy night in a tree you identify as an oak only because it's the only tree related name you remember, and he is thinking about life, or more precisely about catching snakes. The forests of Mayjin were an ideal place for the snakes to live in and during the summer you couldn't take a step without tripping on at least one of those slippery scaly bastards. So how hard can it be to find one in winter? The most common Mayjinn snake, the odder, and there is none to be seen in hours. Can snakes, like, disappear?  
But the odder is really not to be found. Raven has been trying for the last seven hours, in it is not included the friendly visit at the wildnymphs, and during that time he hasn't seen a single scale. He has seen a few nuthatches, two squirrels, a herd of half drowned fallow deers and that was it.  
His angry pondering about the unfairness of nature has been interrupted by a scratch. Slightly above him a big black bird has seated itself. Ricin knows a little about birds, so he identifies the feathery intruder as a raven. The raven squawks. Raven ignores it and pulls a knife out of his boot, looking at it vacantly.  
“Caw caw,” tries the raven again.  
“Hush,” Ricin mumbles. “Sod off.”  
“Caw-cerw.” It sounds as if the raven is actually saying “brother”.  
“You're mistaking me for someone. I thought I told you to sod off.”   
The raven doesn't cease to caw. Soon its sister sits next to it. And another one. And another. It isn't long before there is no space left for movement since everything is black feathers. From a time to time a quite neutral bird sounds are to be heard. Ricin is thinking whether he should start panicking or not. But just to be on the safe side, he rises from his semi-sitting position to a completely sitting one. The ravens are eyeing him with a great deal of interest.  
One of the black birds pecks his boot. Not much, really, but enough to aggravate the already upset cutthroat. Ricin blows into the raven's face in turn. The bird gets scared and it takes off with an alarmed cawing. Panic spreads thorough the flock faster that a forest fire ever could and soon the air is full of black feathers and a cacophony of startled caws. Raven barely manages to cover his ears and hide his head between knees, and considers himself lucky. He waits like that, curled into a tight ball like a tangled ball of a soaked dark yarn, until the raven squawking is so distant he can't hear it any longer.

  
  
The night has turned a bit towards _very early_ from the previous _damn late._ The rain hints no inclination to stopping any time soon, so the stars can't be seen thorough the dense cloud blanket upon the sky. Ricin is tired. So terribly, terribly tired. He has found a forest cottage in almost ruins and decides the wood-worm has to live with him there somehow.  
He is laying on the floor and water dripping from him and his clothes is slowly turning into his very own personal lake. All wood he has found is so soaked that not even the Makers themselves would be able to start a fire with it. Wildnymphs maybe, but certainly not the Makers.  
Now in the dead of night, the omnipresent wetness and cold, even the thought of the wildnymphs' cave seems very friendly. Even if the girls would want to sing thorough the night until dawn. All things considered, the girls were quite pretty and-       
Raven turns to the other side and stars counting sheep with a vigour that surprises even himself.  
  
When he wakes up, it is still dark outside. He can't see the sky thorough the thick crowning and therefore has no way to tell the time. Despite the nature knowledge missed him by a mile when it was given to people, Raven is able to tell the time by looking at stars. In the case of absolute emergency he can even navigate by them. And you know it is a case of emergency when you depend on Raven.  
But right now Raven doesn't give a damn about the stars, he is more focused on spinning his clothes dry. During the few hours he has spent resting it got even wetter, and now he is terribly, insanely cold. At least the weather changed its mind and the rain changed into obtrusive drizzle with no knowledge of personal space while Ricin was sleeping.  
Ricin is getting quite hungry. True, the wildnymphs' dinner was warm, but it certainly didn't fill his stomach and it was a long time ago. Well, he has to make it through somehow. With a heavy sigh and even heavier burden of dislike, the cutthroat and occasional seeker of snakes leaves the nearly fallen apart cottage thorough a window. He would have gone thorough the door, but a big greyling spider has seated itself on in during the rest time and Ricin really doesn't think it a good idea to bother it.  
He almost feels remorse for not taking his cloak instead of the lidded basket. He could wrap himself in the cloak and get some warmth out of it. However Ricin has always sort of suffered from realistic thoughts, so he is aware that even if the potential cloak had survived the tour thorough the undergrowth and hadn't parted with him in parts, it would be so wet by now that it wouldn't be able to warm anything and anyone. He could wrap himself in seaweed at it would serve him all the same.  
On the way he turns every stone and searches every bigger crevice and nook just in case the odder has its night home there. The darkness isn't much of a problem. Raven and the night have a special agreement; Raven has a night vision, and the night is in half of the cases so foggy that any kind of vision is useless. Today things are visible, in spite of that Raven can't find anything but a few earwigs and a couple of small spiders who are not amused.  
  
He has managed to keep standing so far. After three hours, or what at least seems like three hours, two things happen, independenly of each other. Firstly, the dawn is breaking. Secondly, Raven has found a barren hill. It has been the first hill he has ever found that way and they both knew it has been also the last one.  
Ricin called Raven, a mercenary and a killer for hire, totally unsuccessful seeker of snakes or at least one particular snake, has tripped over the hill in question. That isn't any unusual way of finding stuff, or rather it wouldn't be if Raven haven't tripped over it more than once. Twice at the base and twice on his way to the top.

He gets there finally with a hurt forehead and bruised both palms and knees. He sits on a flat rock and watches the dawn as it breaks like dishes that fall out of an overfilled cupboard you forgot to close properly. He has seen the sun rising many times, but it has always been upon urban skylines. Twice in his life he has seen the sunrise over the sea, all the black ships with orange and purple background of sky were beautiful.

This has been for the first time he has seen the rising sun thorough twigs and branches and leaves. It seems completely unnatural to him. If he could, he would punch the whole scenery in its ugly face. The scenery, as if being warned in advance, rather has no face to be punched in. Nevertheless, Raven remains sitting on the rock, doesn't punch anything and instead lets the sleepy sun warm him up. Below the hill a fog is sprawling like a cheap courtesan but the drizzle is fading away and ceasing. It seems the day is going to be pleasing after the weeks, months even, of rain.  
In the end the sun successfully makes its way thorough the cloudy traffic without any problems aside from it taking forever, and from beyond the trees, so now its blinding orange roundness can be admired in all its burning beauty. Raven would call himself more of a night owl rather than a morning bird, but he is getting dry so in fact he is actually quite grateful for that flamboyant ball in the sky. Certainly he isn't feeling frozen and soaked to bone, a luxury absolutely unthinkable in the past few hours. There are suspicious bug noises from the grass to be heard, and as the forest slowly wakes up, birds begin to sing shyly. From a time to time there is eventually a buzzing of a busy flying insect or a gentle snake hiss.

Snake hiss. That makes Ricin alert. As he has been sitting there without a movement, squinting at the morning horizon, he hasn't even noticed he has a company. The company is laying next to him on another rock and basks in the sunlight as if it wasn't dead of night just a half an hour ago. It's about two feet long, full of scales and striped with every shade of grey. Raven and the odder stare at each other, trying to kill the other one just by looking.  
It's true he reaches out for the snake very quickly, but the reptile is even faster and snakes its way to the grass. Every non-toxic plant is grass to Raven, that includes the local mix of clovers, moss and dandelions. The slightly warmed up mercenary sets out after the snake.  
He keeps finding the odder again and again from the way the plants around it rustle and move, but he catches it at a rock so big it almost deserves its own name. He jumps an almost perfect swan dive after the slippery beast, bruising his other elbow while at it as well, nevertheless the snake is captured, and without a chance to bite Raven is stuffed into the basket.  
For a while he rests, breathless after the victory he has achieved, and then he notices a couple of eggs in the gravel in the shadow of the too-big-to-be-just-a-rock. They don't look like bird eggs. Ricin cooks for himself, so he knows what chicken eggs look like, and his little attic apartment was quite liked by local pigeons and from their family life it has been observed that hard eggshell is most likely a rule among all birds.  
These eggs, however, have a soft shell, as if made of leather. Raven, considering himself a pragmatic person, takes a handful, they aren't very big, and throws them into the basket. If the snake doesn't eat them, he is having them for a breakfast once he gets home.  
By the time he gets to the hamlet, he has completely forgotten all about the eggs, but that it is mostly a fault of a group of highwaymen who had the need to get their throats cut. The swampy forest soil has swallowed their bodies as if they were raspberries on a cake, only bubbles left. Given that Raven has dirt, mud, leaves and cedar needles all over himself, a little blood passes unnoticed by completely everyone.  
  
The eggs remind Ricin about themselves nearly a week after the whole expedition once the odder has been safely handed over and out of the house. It happens all of a sudden and catches Ricin by a surprise.  
The wired basket by a very improvised fireplace makes a quiet hissing sound...

 

**Author's Note:**

> There are more stories to come. Eventually.  
> And hey, if you could give me some kind of a feedback, that'd would be awesome. Thanks.


End file.
